Adsorption of ammonium from wastewater treatment plant effluents onto the zeolite; A plug-flow column, optimisation, dynamic and isotherms studies

ABSTRACT

The current work aimed to investigate the removal mechanism of NH₄⁺ from wastewater treatment plant effluent (WWTPE) onto the zeolite in the plug-flow column reactor (PFCR). The adsorption process was optimised as a function of length (2–15), time (0.5–202 min), and accumulation (0.05–2.4 mg/g) using response surface methodology (RSM). The optimal operating parameters for the adsorption were recorded after 134.89 min with 1.52 mg/L of zeolite with 6.685 cm of the column length where the predicted and actual removal was 99.79 vs. 98.00% of NH₄⁺ from WWTPE. The bed depth service time (BDST), Thomas, and Yoon-Nelson models were used to explain the adsorption behaviour. In contrast, the mass transfer factor (MTF) model was carried out to determine the internal and external removal mechanism. The findings revealed that PFCR exhibited an efficiency for removing NH₄⁺ from WWTPE. The dynamic adsorption behaviour was satisfactorily described by the BDST, Thomas, and Yoon-Nelson models. These findings confirmed that the empirical models had verified the suitable of PFCR for removing NH₄⁺ from WWTPE.

KEYWORDS:

• Adsorption
• ammonium
• column adsorption models
• mass transfer factor models
• wastewater zeolite

Symbols used

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Ph.D thesis of Mohd Hairul Khamidun(Development and application of mass transfer model for adsorption of ammonium and phosphate from wastewater) at Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), which the manuscript is derived from the thesis. The authors also acknowledge the Tables (1 ,4,5,6,7) and Figures (1 ,2,3,4,7) and confirm that they used no third-party material in the manuscript. The research was funded by the technical & financial support from Academic Visitor Grant: Vot. 4D058, provided by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Supplementary material

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